Cinco de Mayo

Folks of Mexican heritage will be celebrating Cinco de Mayo on Saturday, commemorating Mexico's defeat in 1862 of a French army of occupation.

Perhaps by 2062, Cinco de Mayo will be a national holiday in the US, as an observance of the importance of Mexican heritage citizens in America. We suspect many Americans would like the idea of taking a poke at the French, even indirectly.

Meanwhile, here are some items that will interest nonprofit marketers who appreciate the role that Latinos will be playing in our future as donors, advocates and voters … a future already at hand in some states, and taking hold throughout the US.

Discovery Communications is intensifying its US programming efforts targeting Latinos, Discovery en Espanol, providing programming to Azteca America for prime time and for kids, as described in this article. Other mainstream broadcasters are headed in the same direction, even as advertisers clamor to climb aboard Spanish-language networks.

Engaging the 56% of Latinos in the US who are online (67% among 18-27 year-olds and 71% of English-speaking Latinos), social networking sites like MiGente.com, ElHood.com, Quepasa.com, Vostu.com and a Spanish version of Hi5.com are blossoming, as reported in this AP piece. Meantime, Latino youth are carving out their own space on mainstream sites like MySpace, while more and more mainstream media sites have Spanish versions.

Finally, here from MediaPost is an excellent discussion of the differing media habits and attitudes of English-speaking versus Spanish-speaking Latinos.

Use our “latinos” tag on the left side of Agitator's homepage to find other resources regarding marketing to Latinos.